Another Great Keyword Research Tool

Michael Buczek - January 22, 2010

When conducting keyword research, it is important to have as much information as possible so you can pick the best word for the page you are trying to optimize.   There are a plethora of tools available and some of our favorites include WordTracker, KeywordDiscovery and the Free Google Keyword Tool.   These tools are great because they can show you some very important statistics about each keyword.   Some stats that they show include approximate search volume and the competitiveness of the keyword.   The one thing they don’t show you however, is trending.   For that we recommend that you take a look at Google’s Insights for Search.

Insights for Search allows you to compare up to 5 keywords and look at trending data from as far back as 2004.   It also displays significant news stories or events that happened during the time frame so you can see how these events played a role in the search data for the keywords. Trending data such as this can help you to choose a better keyword.   Perhaps when cross referencing your researched terms with Insights, you will notice that a highly searched term is actually decreasing in trending data.   This might cause you to evaluate a different term that is a rising search, which you may not have discovered from your other keyword research tools alone.

Insights for Search also allows you to see related search terms, regional interest and rising searches.   In my opinion, the rising searches section is the most interesting.   These are words that you should be focusing on because they are becoming popular very quickly.   When you see “breakout” listed instead of an actual percentage, it means that the search term has experienced a change in growth greater than 5000%.

The next time you are doing keyword research for a new page or blog, also consult Insights for Search to see what other keywords you might find.